The Song of the Lark

In the mid- and late 19th century, the US underwent significant cultural change. The Industrial Revolution made enormous city spaces, drawing in immigrants from abroad and from other territories in the country for work. As more people earned money, economic classes shifted. In 19th-century America, the middle class that defined American values in the early to mid-20th century emerged.

The conflict between the dominance of agrarian culture in America And urban culture significantly impacted the identity of America. Small towns like Thea’s hometown of Moonstone, Colorado, saw their young people move away to cities for education and work. The pull of small family farms gave way to large industrial farms, which changed Americans’ relationships with land ownership. Thea is an emblem of the future: She leaves her small town to earn success in the big city and returns to her small town to find it myopic and ignorant in view and culture. The Moonstone in which Thea’s parents found success, happiness, and value is not the same Moonstone that Thea discovers when she returns to visit. This discrepancy in generational experiences with the agrarian lifestyle was common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. People like Thea were torn between two significantly different lifestyles: the urban and the agrarian.

At this time, American women discovered a new identity that shifted culture dynamics in gender roles. Thea defies traditional gender roles by pursuing a career in singing over becoming a wife and mother. Many women’s journeys to the city to work for their own money mirrored Thea’s defiance of gender roles. Women earned more autonomy and agency during this period, especially in the advocacy of women’s suffrage that led to the right for women to vote in 1920.

Immigrant identity is an important subtext in The Song of the Lark. Thea is sometimes ashamed of her immigrant background. Scandinavians were integral to the settling of the American Plains, but Thea and her parents are heavily conscious of accents, reputation, and fitting in. It takes Thea several years to figure out that her immigrant background is central to her development of resilience. Thea is constantly in contact with different people. Moonstone is itself a diverse community where Mexican immigrants, Scandinavian immigrants, and white-identifying Americans live and work together. While there is racism and prejudice, there is also a strong foundation of community in Moonstone. Two of Thea’s most important teachers, Professor Wunsch and Mr. Harsanyi, are immigrants from Germany and Hungary, respectively. The influence of immigrant work ethic, the variety of languages and cultures that these immigrants bring with them, and Thea’s embrace of these sometimes disparate cultures capture the heterogeneity of early American life in the Midwest. The novel offers a literary record of America in a time of cultural and social change.